I am very happy with the progress made this afternoon on the drawloom.  I looked closely again at photos of a drawloom, identical to my loom, taken about 29 years ago.  The counterweights looked to now be at the proper height, but the beater seemed low so that was raised, then came more adjusting of shafts, lamms, and treadles.

At long last we seemed to have quite good sheds, with just a few threads out of place, but I believe they are being caused by two broken warp ends tangling with neighboring threads, and they will be fixed Thursday.

You couldn’t really see them in the photo yesterday, but there were some loose, “baggy” heddles on the first four shafts and I was wishing I’d replaced them while threading.  Then I decided three shafts not being used would be removed right then, so that was taken care of.

I bought this drawloom used, about 29 years ago, and it came with “string heddles,” made from what feels like seine twine, but slightly finer than the 12/6 sold today.  Four years ago, after calculating the heddles I would need, I found there were nowhere near enough, so I went on a two or three evening binge of making the needed long-eye heddles.  It turns out I had left some of the old ones on the loom in case they were needed.

They were needed, but after threading, sleying, and lashing the warp on, I did not like the baggy heddles constantly moving outward, so the warp was un-lashed, and the threads in the baggy heddles were un-sleyed and un-heddled.  Then I asked Char, on rather short notice, if she could quickly make a heddle jig using one of my long-eye heddles for a pattern.  She did, and another 150 long-eye heddles (always keep a tube of 12/6 seine twine in your stash!) were made.  Late this evening, the tremaining original heddles were removed from shafts 1-4 and the new ones placed on the shafts.

In the morning, I’ll re-thread the 150 or so threads, re-sley, lash the warp back on, check the sheds again, and hopefully, at long last, finally be able to start weaving!  I think I’m fine, but a couple members of my family said they can see the excitement! Perseverance is a very good thing!  And having Char to help puzzle all this out and help make adjustments has been a blessing!  Thank you, Char!

After we were done this evening, I was showing Char examples of double-harness weaving including an example of weaving I’d done on this drawloom 29 years ago, a piece woven on a loom with an opphamta attachment 30 years ago, as well as my samples from the Basic Drawloom class at VavStuga (from Nov. 2012).  She was surprised and a bit impressed with what can be done on these looms. And now I’m looking forward to years of double harness weaving!

There will be a break while I weave and Char continues with her woodworking projects, and then we’ll see about getting the opphamta attachment added to the standard loom.  I can hardly wait!